With a little willpower, it takes roughly 30 days for a person to form a new habit.  As with mastering anything new, the act of starting and getting beyond the preliminary stage where everything feels awkward is 80% of the battle.  This is precisely why it’s important to make small, positive changes every day over the course of at least a 30 day period.

It’s like the old saying:  “How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.”  The same philosophy holds true for making changes in your life.  Trying to bite off more than you can chew will only make you choke.  But taking smaller, manageable bites, one at a time – eating a little healthier, exercising a little, creating some simple productive habits, making small changes in your Chiropractic practice for example – are amazing ways to make positive changes and get excited about life.

And when you start small like this, you won’t need a lot of motivation either.  The simple act of getting started and doing something will give you the momentum you need, and soon you’ll find yourself in a positive spiral of changes – one building on the other.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate self-discipline as an invisible magic.  You can’t see, taste, or smell it, but its effects are unmistakable.  It can transform overweight into slim, uninformed into expert, poor into rich, and misery into happiness.  It’s the submerged part of the iceberg others don’t see when they see a person’s “genius.”

It’s easy to feel that success comes easily – that it’s just a matter of luck, or an innate gift.  But anyone who has achieved anything has done so because they’ve been able to control and direct their own inner strengths and actions to the extent that has enabled them to become super-skilled at what they do.  And this kind of self-discipline, like a muscle, can be developed by all of us, including you

Your body has five senses, but not to be ignored are the inner senses of your soul: intuition, foresight, and self-trust.  The most common differences between successful and unsuccessful people lie in their use of these inner senses. This makes all the difference in the world.

Being true to yourself takes work, because it’s so easy to get sidetracked and influenced by others.  It’s easy to get caught up in the drama.  You have to put in the effort and stand strong every day to honor your own ideas, feelings, intuitions and aspirations.

I challenge you to make this your lifelong motto: “I respectfully do not care.”  Say it to anyone who passes judgment on something you strongly believe in or something that makes you who you are.  People will inevitable judge you at some point anyway, and that’s OK.  You affected their life; don’t let them affect yours.

Those who complain the most, accomplish the least.  It’s always better to attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.  It’s not over if you’ve lost; it’s over when you do nothing but complain about it.  If you believe in something, keep trying.  Don’t let the shadows of the past darken the doorstep of your future.  Spending today complaining about yesterday won’t make tomorrow any brighter.  Take action instead.  Let what you’ve learned improve how you live.  Make a change and never look back.

And regardless of what happens in the long run, remember that true happiness begins to arrive only when you stop complaining about your problems and you start being grateful for all the problems you don’t have.

1. You have an interesting life and it is magnificent, even during the toughest times.  Keep this in mind, and live it accordingly.  You are in control.  Change your thoughts.  As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there” somewhere else – as long as you think that someone or something else is responsible for your suffering – your situation is hopeless.  It means that you are forever in the victim role, that you’re suffering even in paradise.  Don’t do this to yourself.  Be your hero, not your victim.

1. If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.  Feelings, good and bad, always come and go.  The trick is to be grateful when your mood is high and graceful when it is low.

The most important currency in life is experience.  Money comes and goes, but your experiences stay with you until your very last breath.  So don’t be afraid to mix things up and challenge yourself with new life experiences.

When things aren’t adding up in your life, start subtracting.  Life gets easier when you delete the things and people that make it difficult.  Get rid of some of life’s complexities so you can spend more time with people you love and do more of the things you love.  Get rid of the clutter so you are left with only that which gives you value.